Once Mine Eyes Have Seen
by Mistress Sorcha
Summary: Tag for the inconparable episode "Dark Side of the Moon". Sam's POV. Truly seeing his big brother for the first time was both eye-opening and soul-crushing. Knowing you had a hand in breaking a good man, well...Sam thinks it may be too late to fix now...


A tag of sorts to the incredible episode "Dark Side of the Moon" Warning: Major angst ahead! Sammy's POV.

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**Once Mine Eyes Have Seen...**

Sam wasn't used to seeing such raw, naked despair in his big brother's eyes. It had always been there, he knew. He'd caught tiny glimpses of it over the years when Dean had been too hurt or too drained to hide it away like he always did. It seemed to Sam now that Dean had next to nothing left in his seemingly inexhaustible internal fuel tanks. Dean had always, always managed to find just a little bit more…to give just a little bit more…even if it meant he had to give everything…even if it meant he had to give it all. It seemed to Sam that his big brother was disappearing before his very eyes. Dean had no strength left to build his walls, to fortify his ever-present fortress he kept around his heart and soul. The pain and ache and despair that had long ago been conquered and locked away inside finally had the free reign they'd always sought because finally, their warden was down for the count.

Sam always saw bits and pieces of the raw, torn edges of Dean's persona. He knew a lot of what Dean hid away by the way he tried to hide it. To Sam, it had been kind like reading a book in a foreign language, once you knew how to translate it, you could find whatever you were looking for inside. Before Hell, when he'd had a year left to live, Dean's walls had already been crumbling. After Hell, their stability had been tenuous at best. Sam, of course, had seen this, but in his addict-brain, it hadn't registered as fully as it should have. Dean had needed him. He had put up the front, of course, but he had left the door open into himself a little, too, thinking that Sam was still his Sammy and that Sammy would peek inside and maybe help him put himself back together again. His Sammy, his baby brother, best friend, his son…his entire world…_**HE **_would have been there. Sammy of old would have poked and prodded and nudged and maybe even downright kicked open the cracked door and finally gotten his brother to let it out and to let it go. _**HE**_ would have been there and been the brother and friend Dean had always been for **_HIM_**.

It was too bad for Dean that he was Sam now. And Sam had no time to coddle and bolster a brother he hardly recognized anymore. All he had seemed to see was weakness. Sam had decided all by himself that while he didn't need his big brother around anymore because he was all grown up now, he was kinda obligated to him for raising him and bringing him back from the dead and going to Hell for him and all…

Helping Dean find himself had been the last thing on Sam's mind. All that thrummed inside him had been blood and revenge. He'd actually become his father after all and just like John, he'd barely registered that Dean was even there. His brother was dying by inches, silently pleading for help because he had never known how to actually ask for or accept it for himself and Sam had slammed the door in his face. He had more important things to do and well, if Dean couldn't figure it out for himself well then, that was his own problem.

Once Sam had finally been free of the cloud that had hovered inside his mind, fogging his path and obscuring the parts of his mind that had been trying to warn him, to make him see sense, he'd been too late. He'd jump-started the Apocalypse already. Dean was in shambles, barely holding on. Sam had pushed and pushed and pushed until his brother couldn't hold onto him anymore. Sam had slipped through his fingers and he'd come to the conclusion that he'd failed to do what he had set out to do so long ago. He failed to save Sam. Sam had gone off again, selfish as usual, only to come crawling back when he'd realized he needed Dean's help to keep the Devil at bay. And Dean…poor, broken Dean…he'd let him back in again. He'd kept his distance, kept Sam at arms-length but he'd let him back all the same. Sam had balked at Dean's reluctance to treat him as a well-trusted partner. Balked at Dean lashing out at him and making him see the rift he'd caused in their partnership. And Dean, predictable Dean, he had let him slip back close once again.

Dean was so far beyond broken at this point, it was almost laughable. He kept dragging himself back up after being knocked down time and time again and he kept "soldiering on" just like his dad had always drilled into him to do. It was sheer stubbornness and the belief that he had to save the world, something he'd always held himself to, even if his "world" had only consisted of his tiny, tattered family, he was determined to save it. Now, he was determined to save "the world". He had become the champion of a world that just maybe didn't really deserve to be saved. Still, he trudged along, always trying to do the right thing. He was that superhero that Sam had seen his brother as when he was a boy. Dean was that man, even if he never was able to see it in himself. Sam saw, though. Too little, too late now…

Dean had given every single thing, every single part of himself freely to those he loved and even to the strangers they saved and yet he never had anything in return. He never got anything back. Charity relief and token thanks, that was all. Sam mourned him. He mourned the Dean that never was, seeing him so crystal clear and achingly raw for perhaps they first time ever. Dean had seen his personal Heaven. He had seen that Sam's happiest, most cherished memories were of a life that was everything he could find to escape his own life and be "normal" or to be and do what he wanted, irregardless of what it meant for Dean.

Sam's first taste of normal in his first Thanksgiving… Dean's eager and heartfelt attempts to give him the holidays like he'd had, ever so briefly…they'd fallen on deaf ears, blind eyes and a closed heart. Sam's first taste of freedom when he'd ran away at 14 for two whole weeks…to Sam, it was an escape of Dad and oppression and their life. To Dean…it was a desperate, heart-rending time, full of despair and panic and extreme loneliness and worst of all, abject fear. He had come to believe the worst. He had thought his baby brother was dead. He had come to know the loss of his purpose in the world and it had torn him in ways he wouldn't or couldn't ever express. Sam's break from his family, his ultimate bid for freedom from all things Winchester: the night he'd left for school. To him, it was him bursting free and getting the life he'd always dreamed of having. To Dean, it was soul-crushing. An utter slap in the face that leaving their family behind…leaving **_HIM_** behind…was a special and happy moment. For Dean it had been the end of his world. Sam running away like a Hellhound was at his heels, their dad packing up and driving away while he'd gone to make sure his baby brother made it safely to the bus stop, even as his heart was crushed, even as he lost all sense of everything he'd ever known, he'd still wanted to make sure Sam was safe. It was the moment his family tossed him away and left him behind. Almost all of Sam's Heaven-made memories had been of the times where he showed just how little he cared and how much he didn't need his brother in his life to be happy.

Sam had never bothered to think of what it had been like to his brother. Dean was like a rare and tragically beautiful creature, too pure and special for this world and utterly and ultimately damned to intolerable pain and cruelty for the sin of being who he was: a truly selfless, worthy being. Sam's guts churned, seeing some of Dean's most cherished memories…Memories that were of their family…of home…of hope and happiness and love. Sam saw now that all Dean had ever wanted, all that he had craved and had been denied, had been to love and to be loved.

Sam had been deeply sad to know God, their last hope, was not going to save the day. He had been even more saddened when Castiel had seemingly lost the last of his faith in his father and had slipped away. Cas was a friend, one who'd helped them more than he ever should have and Sam was truly heartbroken for the fallen angel. It was his big brother, though, that ripped his soul out and left him broken. Dean's faith was gone. His faith in God, in his brother, in himself…crushed and set adrift into the ether. Sam saw it all now. He'd been the one to cause the first crack in his soul then proceeded to hammer and chip away at it nearly continually after that. He'd been joined by their father, demons, angels and so many lesser monsters as they diligently worked to crush the life and light out of his brother piece by piece. The last straw…the last hope of a desperate man, his brother had said… had been God.

Sam had thought he was lost and broken before…nothing compared to the image burned permanently in his mind. Dean, clutching what had once been one of his most treasured possessions for one last moment before his fingers falling open and it falling away from his grasp forever. A glint of gold and black stilled mid-fall for a moment then gone into the trash. It was the ultimate message. Dean was done. He was done with Sam, with God, with everything he'd once loved and held onto so tightly. Dean would save the world, if he could…but he was resigned to the fact that he was on his own from then on.

Sam had tried to tell him they were in this together, that he'd be there to back him up, but Dean had seen first-hand that he couldn't depend on Sam being there anymore, if he ever really could at all. He couldn't depend on God, on the angels…maybe not even on himself anymore. He didn't even know who he was anymore, if he ever had…

As Dean stalked brokenly to the car, Sam truly knew all hope was lost.

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**A/N:** I know, again with the angst, but really, it's all Kripke's and the boys' fault!!! These past few episodes have been just heartbreaking, dammit!!! Please, Read and Review! I am always so awed and feel so priveledged when I recieve reviews, so please, make my day!!!


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